Toyota: Addressing Social Issues

Toyota is another one of the few corporations that publish sustainability reports. The company’s 2012 sustainability report details prior year objectives, current plan for environmental stewardship, and the impacts of actions taken and operations. Like NiSource, Toyota:

Promotes sustainability;
Attempts to fulfill moral obligation;
Has the license to operate;
Has a good reputation.

Toyota has 3 pillars of social contribution activities: youth development, environmental protection/nature conservation, and social welfare. Toyota’s actions clearly display a prioritization of social issues as well as setting the company’s objectives with social expectations while unequivocally prioritizing and meeting business goals.

Generic Social Issues

Like most corporations, Toyota contributes to its communities through philanthropy and donations. Some of the issues they address do not necessarily pertain to their line of work and are not significantly affected by the company’s operations. Some of their 2012 activities geared toward supporting strong, growing communities included:

Forest conservation project in Japan which focused on tree thinning as well as education on the importance of tree thinning and cultivating a healthy forest
Support activities for children’s home in Japan such as games to promote sound and healthy growth of children
Support for youth’s activities in India by donating trophies and metals to annual sports events at local elementary schools as well as uniforms
Support employee participation in local sports activities in Germany
Toyota Material Handling in Sweden held a tour open to the general community
Charity drive for cancer research (Relay for Life) in the USA and donated $3000 to the American Cancer Society

These are all to support social issues that are important to society but aren’t affected by their general operations. The concerns are not related to Toyota’s value chain activities and strategies. Also, these do not influence the corporation’s long-term competitiveness. Other industries’ operations impact these social concerns that Toyota is in-part taking responsibility for. This is why these actions are considered CSR; however, they are not strategic CSR since they do not coincide with the direct operations of the company. These good-intended actions were a response to miscellaneous social issues within the communities that Toyota operated in, but they have the least long-term effect of the three levels of social issues.

Value Chain Social Impacts & Inside-Out Linkages

Toyota’s operations have many effects on the environment. Fortunately, they have continuously monitored and predicted environmental hazards in which they could react sooner than later, hence prevention. This has resulted in a strategy that creates shared value for the company and society, which further yields that Toyota has actively participated in CSR. A “CSR Policy” was developed; an excerpt is as follows:

It has several focus areas in its CSR Policy:

To see the policy through, Toyota established actions that could be taken and measured. Toyota aims to globally establish a low carbon society, a recycling-based society, and establish protection and a society in harmony with nature to contribute to the sustainable growth of society and the planet (Toyota, 2012). This is accomplished through reducing the environmental impact at all stages in the value chain. Some of their actions that fulfill the policy include:

Establish a low-carbon society through Hybrid technology, use of renewable energy, and eco-driving enlightenments
Establish a recycling-based society through promoting biotechnology, reducing water use, using returnable containers, and promoting “reduce, reuse, recycle”
Establish protection and a society in harmony with nature through enhancing management of harmful chemical substances contained in products, expanding the use of waterborne paints worldwide,

Society is significantly affected by these activities in many different ways. The primary focus may be sustainability through promoting the environmental quality, but Toyota does not limit its contributions to just sustainability. By transitioning normal operations to produce such social benefits, it is participating in strategic CSR.

Impact of Efforts

Toyota’s participation in CSR has gone farther than merely Responsive CSR; it has managed to indulge in the creation of strategic CSR. It has established a shared value strategy for operations that simultaneously promotes a better business and society in the long-run.

It has contributed to things such as improving air quality, increasing employment, promoting safety, etc. There are many stakeholders that are affected by Toyota’s decisions to improve society and the corporation, including (but not limited to) employees, customers, local residents, perspective employees, and shareholders. Each decision affects each group in a different way and to a different extent, but Toyota tries to ensure the quality of its decisions so that they provide the biggest benefit to both the corporation and society. Their sustainability driven decisions promote longer living for those in its current and future communities while enhancing the quality of the corporation’s reputation and revenues, which results in pleased shareholders.

2010 - present

Social Dimensions of Competitive Context & Ouside-In Linkages

There are many different factors in the external environment that affect the drivers of competitiveness in the areas that Toyota operates. These particular factors serve as motivation for Toyota to act; their responses to the environment include things such as:

Investing in R&D initiatives to work towards producing “always better cars”
Improving traffic safety through (1) lecturing people about traffic safety, (2) development of car technology to promote accident avoidance and passenger/driver safety in collisions, and (3) information on the traffic environment (traffic jams, maintenance, etc.)
Linking cars and society with people, houses, and infrastructure through the proposed Smart Grid and Toyota Smart Center, which improves energy efficiency
Distributed 2.44 million traffic safety books to children
Had 5095 participants for the Toyota Safety School for children

Things such as strengthening the future and current assets such as human capital, vehicles, homes, etc. go beyond the basic requirements set forth by any regulatory body. These things are considered CSR because they create a shared value between society and the corporation for now and the future. It is evident that Toyota seeks to better the external factors that affect drivers of the quantity and quality of available business inputs, regulatory policies and incentives, and local availability of supporting industries in their operation location.

S

Strategic CSR & Social Accounting